Weekly Daf #133

Bird Food

After he had pronounced a drought upon the idol worshipping King
Ahab of Israel, the Prophet Eliyahu was directed by Hashem to
seek refuge in a remote location where food would miraculously
be brought to him by ravens. The ravens did indeed bring him
bread and meat each morning and evening.

But where did they bring the meat from and how did the prophet
know it was kosher?

The meat, says the Talmud, was from the kitchens of Ahab. But
Ahab was a committed idol worshipper, so how could meat from an
animal slaughtered by him or one of his idol worshipping servants
be considered kosher?

This is proposed as a support for the opinion expressed by Rabbi
Anan in the name of the Sage Shmuel that the slaughtering done
by a Jew who worships idols is kosher. But the Talmud rejects
this proof because the meat may indeed not have been kosher, but
was explicitly permitted in this extraordinary situation by Hashem
when He informed the prophet that the ravens would feed him.

Tosefos raises an interesting problem. In the Talmud's initial
assumption that the meal of an animal slaughtered by an idolater
is indeed kosher there is still a problem as to how the prophet
could eat meat which had disappeared from sight since there is
a rabbinic injunction against eating such meat for fear that the
birds may have switched it with non-kosher meat from non-Jews.
Tosefos' resolution is that Eliyahu relied upon the Divine promise
to feed him meat that this meat would not come from non-Jews,
but the Talmud initially hesitated to suggest that this promise
also included a dispensation regarding the meat of an animal slaughtered
by an idolater.

The distinction made by Tosefos is thus explained by Rabbi Tzvi
Hirsh Chayos: When the Torah wrote that "The Torah is not
in heaven" it ruled that prophecy could not interfere in
the halachic process delegated to human intellect. But a prophet
may, through prophecy, clarify the facts of a case. The Talmud
therefore assumed that Eliyahu relied on his prophecy to ascertain
that the meat indeed came from a Jewish kitchen, but not to abrogate
the halacha prohibiting idolater-slaughtered meat until the conclusion
was reached that even the halacha was abrogated temporarily by
Divine command.

Chullin 5a

River Talk

On his way to perform the great mitzvah of ransoming captives Rabbi
Pinchas ben Yair found his journey blocked by the impassable Ginai
River.

"Part your waters Ginai," requested the sage, "so
that I may pass."

"You are going forward to do the will of your Master,"
replied the reluctant river, "and I flow on to do the will
of my Master. There is no guarantee that you will succeed in
your mission (since the captors may not consent to the ransoming
- Rashi) while I will certainly succeed in mine (the Divine order
for all rivers to flow to the sea - Rashi)."

Only after the sage threatened to dry up the river did it finally
part its waters to allow him and his company to pass through.

The problem raised by this and other sections of the Talmud concerning
speech by inanimate objects such as the river is resolved by Tosefos
in two different approaches:

It was the angel in charge of seas and rivers who engaged
the sage in this dialogue. Maharsha expands this idea to explain
the statement made by the grasses at the time of Creation (Chullin
60a). Every blade of grass, say our Sages, has an angel in charge
of it who commands it to grow from the earth. It was these angels,
he concludes, that did the talking just as the Ginai River's angel
did here.

No dialogue actually took place. The Talmud is describing
Rabbi Pinchas' thought process as to why the river was initially
reluctant to part its waters. While this approach may be somewhat
difficult to apply to the statement of the grass, it provides
a perfect explanation for the dialogue between Rabbi Eliezer ben
Durdai and the mountains, heaven, earth, sun, moon and stars (Avodah
Zarah 17a).